As the dust settled on New York City following the 9/11 attacks, Robert De Niro and his longtime business partner, producer Jane Rosenthal, looked for ways to pull Lower Manhattan out of the ashes. The Tribeca Film Festival, which debuted in 2002, has not only successfully launched a new generation of filmmakers; it has also…
Film legend Robert De Niro has lived or worked in Lower Manhattan for years. “You know, the East Side is another world to someone like me who’s Lower Manhattan,” he said. So, for De Niro, the attacks on 9/11 hit especially close to home: “I was just about to fly to California. I was at…
Washington — A federal judge on Thursday pressed lawyers for Ohio Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty and the Justice Department on new efforts by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts’ Board of Trustees to add President Trump’s name back onto the building’s facade. Lawyers for Beatty, who sued last year over Mr. Trump’s…
Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb general who oversaw atrocities in Bosnia in the 1990s, has died in prison at age 84, the Serbian state RTS television and the official Bosnian Serb television reported. The reports said Mladic died in a U.N. prison hospital in The Hague, Netherlands. A family member of Mladic, who spoke on…
Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, who splashed her signature polka dots on paintings, sculptures and museum installations around the world, has died, her studio said Thursday. She was 97. Kusama died Aug. 14 at a hospital in Tokyo, Yayoi Kusama Studio said. “She continued to paint until her final days, never setting aside her brush, and…
The Trump administration said it may need to demolish the Kennedy Center if a plan to close the building for two years as part of a controversial renovation project pushed by President Trump and the organization’s board of trustees is blocked by a federal judge. In a Tuesday court filing, the Justice Department said the…
Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and negotiator on Middle East affairs, met with Hamas leaders in Egypt on Sunday to discuss the latest U.S.-backed peace deal that seeks the group’s disarmament and a road map for the transfer of power to a new government, according to a source with knowledge of the meeting. The meeting…
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers may soon be outfitted with gloves that can deliver painful electric shocks intended to gain compliance from combative individuals. ICE plans to spend between $10 million and $20 million to purchase “conductive distraction and de-escalation devices” for officers and agents by March, according to a notice published Monday by…
After surviving the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history and presiding over multiple funerals for his slain congregants, Rabbi Jeffrey Myers struggled to pray. “There was this emptiness to it,” recalls Myers, of Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh. He turned to the biblical Book of Psalms — its hymns, poetry and prayers covering “the entire…
London — The U.S. military’s Central Command repeated an assertion on Tuesday evening that has been made by the Trump administration many times over the last two weeks, insisting that “despite Iranian aggression, the Strait of Hormuz remains open for commercial vessel traffic.” CENTCOM acknowledged in the same statement that Iran had launched more than 30…
